17th August 2016

Ever wondered what goes on in a startup office? I mean, beyond the free events, Friday drinks, pool tournaments and team lunches… What do we do in a day?

As we grow as a company, our next stage as a team is to create the industry standard for Customer Support. We bring together a range of experience and skills including sales, marketing, psychology and hospitality which enables us to give our customers and venue managers the ultimate level of expert advice.

My team of five works to keep our community happy with the way they use Hire Space; you are our community. It’s our venue managers who rely on us for enquiries, it's new club owners, school caretakers and event organisers at huge hotel chains - these are the people I help every day to create awesome venue profiles on our site. But it doesn't stop there, we're on hand to help venues manage enquiries, troubleshoot problems and facilitate contact between venue managers and customers using the site.

Every day, my colleague Joe reads through the event briefs and sends a handpicked selection of spaces to offer to customers. The proposal arrives in a neat email and the customer can enquire with any or all of those venues in one click.

What sort of enquiries does the team work with?
Well, just this week there's been…

A yoga teacher in Manchester looking for an affordable community hall to hold a meditation workshop for a few evenings in August.

A corporate PA wanting to find an informal boardroom in Central Liverpool with lunch included for two days.

A Bride and Groom dreaming of a garden wedding venue with a marquee and accommodation for their guests in the countryside.

And even someone looking for a private dining spot overlooking the Thames so they can propose to their partner.

We also just followed up on a huge investor networking event; a 250 guest, sold out show which took place over two floors in the incredible All Bar One in The O2.

On the Venue Support side, this afternoon I’m archiving enquiries; making sure that venue managers are responding to customers to convert those enquiries into quality bookings.

We're really lucky to have an in-house tech team that are constantly creating new tools that make things quick and easy, like the 'Enquiries Feed'. It features on the Venue Dashboard of all venue managers so they can view all new and pending enquiries and keep us updated with just a few clicks.

However, not all of our community are tech-trained events and sales professionals, so I also like to make phone calls and work through the enquiries feed together with the venue manager. It’s nice to be able to make the process as easy and enjoyable as possible, because, the faster a venue responds to an enquiry, the more visible their venue will be on the website - win-win!

I’m leaving at 5:30 tonight as we are going to a venue showcase for one of our big groups - Camden Dining. I’ve been helping the venue manager to get their profiles up and running. Tonight we’ll be viewing four venues so the Venue Experts know exactly which space to recommend when creating proposals for their clients, plus it means I can offer more bespoke advice when creating their venue profiles on the site.

It’s definitely one of the best parts of working in events - you get rewarded for your hard work with great parties!